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While I was pregnant, I had a feeling that I was having a little boy. I am not sure why I felt like it was a boy but I just did. I guess you could say that it was a mother’s intuition already kicking in and just knowing.

On December 10th, I felt like I was having a boy even more. Honestly, after that I think I would have been shocked it I had a girl (not that I would have been upset but I would have been very surprised). On December 10th, the little man had not really moved around very much in my belly. I was starting to wonder if I needed to call the doctor. I decided to go workout and around 2:30 in the afternoon he started moving. I was oh so relieved that he was moving inside me. Those little movements mean so much when you are pregnant. A couple of hours later was when I received the call from my dad letting me know that my grandfather had passed away and my grandmother was in the hospital. My mom had found my grandfather around 2:30 that day.

We had not gotten to tell my grandfather that we had chosen Francis to be the middle name if we were to have a little boy. I honestly think that Grandpa knew and that is why Guyon started moving again that day. He had met Grandpa.

Before Guyon was born, friends of ours had heard about the project I was working on for my family and asked if we had any leftovers. They wanted to do something for our child. Being 35 weeks pregnant and going through the clothes again was heart wrenching. I had the worst time picking clothes out but I got myself to do it. We gave them some from both grandma and grandpa. I wasn’t really sure what would come of it.

Last weekend, we received a gift from them. It is a teddy bear made of two of my grandfather’s shirts and the red heart and his feet are grandma’s jacket. That blue and yellow striped shirt was a polo shirt that grandpa wore all of the time. We all remember him wearing it. The other blue shirt was a long sleeve shirt that grandpa got for Christmas or his birthday one year from the family. The red jacket was one we all remember grandma wearing. She wore it last July for the Fourth when I saw her for the last time. Thank goodness for the selfies we took with her that day.

This past week, I had my camera out taking pictures for Guyon’s 2 month birthday. I decided to lay the bear down on the floor with him and see what he did. The smiles and kisses were almost immediate. (We aren’t sure if he just smelled the McDonalds or White Castles ingrained in the shirts or not and he was just hungry.) To see my little boy with a memento of a great man, husband, father, grandfather, leader and servant made me so happy. I only hope that our little Guyon can live up to his middle name and know how much it means to us that he carries it on in the family. As much as I would have loved to not have to have one of these bears and for Guyon to actually meet his great grandparents, this bear means a lot to me and hopefully it will to Guyon too.

I know that grandpa was smiling down on us as I was taking these photos. I may get teary eyed thinking about the whole thing but these pictures help to make me smile and know that both him and grandma will always be with us and that we were so lucky to have them for as long as what we did.

The sign went up for the Kite Festival in our town right after the little man was born. Apparently he told dad that he wanted to go see the kites when mom wasn’t around. So this past weekend we went to the Kite Festival.

At first, we weren’t sure that we wanted to go because there were a lot of people. The weather was nice and the parking wasn’t that far away so we decided to go for a bit. We put the sunglasses on and pulled out the stroller. Up the hill we went and boy were we surprised to see how many kites were flying. We even took some family pictures!

Little man has picked out the kite that Grandpa is going to build for him for next year. We can’t wait to see it!This is the first of many of Guyon the Great’s Adventures. Stay tuned for more.

Now that it has taken me almost a month to finally sit down and right all of this down. Crazy how time flies but with lots of visitors and just getting used to having a little around, I finally found some time to start writing down everything about our little man.

The last of the belly pictures that you will see with this pregnancy. This one was taken at 38 weeks. What you can’t see is my exhausted, uncomfortable look on my face.

At 38 weeks and 2 days, Baby Caff decided that it was time to start the process of coming into the world. I was trying to wait as long as I could until going to the hospital but when I was finally in enough pain that the drive was going to be hard to stand, it was time to go and much to my dismay this came in the middle of the semi finals of the Big Ten Tournament game that included a Purdue win (that I didn’t see due to no tvs in Labor and Delivery Triage). Upon getting to the hospital(around 3:30pm), I was still only 1-2 cm. Even though my contractions were coming every 1-2 minutes, I still couldn’t be admitted because I wasn’t in active labor.

We were sent to walk the halls for an hour or two and I was determined to do anything and everything to get labor moving. I think the only time I sat down in the hour and half that we were gone was to go to the bathroom. We walked all of the hallways in the hospital and I even did a couple of sets of squats. Sean’s phone was starting to die so we spent some time charging his phone in the parking garage where I walked up and down the ramp multiple times, having to stop quite a few times to breathe through contractions.

We went back up to Labor and Delivery Triage and when I walked in the room, the nurse looked at me and said, “I like that face you are making.” I think she knew that I might have progressed some while we were out. It was about 6:15 pm when the Doctor came back into measure me and sure enough, I was 5 cm. Thank goodness. I was really dreading having to be sent home when deep down I felt like the baby was coming.

I was moved to a Labor and Delivery room and started on antibiotics and fluids so that I could get my epidural. I probably squeezed Sean’s hand off multiple times during this period too due to breathing through some of the contractions but it seems to be ok today. It is still attached and he is using it just fine these days. I was transferred during the change of shift which was nice because I really only had one nurse during the entire delivery. Jenn was an awesome nurse and she talked me through so much while also giving me lots of details about what was going on during the process.

At about 8 pm, I was able to get my epidural. At this point, Sean went to get the stuff from the car and food for dinner from Subway. The process to get the epidural went quickly and soon I was only feeling pressure, which was awesome. I was glad to not have to breathe so hard through the contractions. I feel like this was also another reason that I remember so much about his birth since I wasn’t having to worry about the contractions and breathing every time.

At 9:30 ish, my doctor came back in to see how things were going. I was 8 cm. Everyone seemed a little shocked that I was moving as quickly as what I was considering that it was my first pregnancy. Everything was going very quickly. My water at this point had still not broken through. I was told to rest as much as possibly and Sean tried to sleep a little bit in a chair across the room. I’m not sure Sean knew what to do with himself considering we just had to wait it out.

At 11:45ish, I was checked again to see where things were headed. I was 10 cm and still no water had broke. My doctor ended up breaking my water for me and was told that we would soon start pushing.

Strange side note story, that plays a funny part to delivery. On March 13th, the clocks were to spring forward at 2am for Daylight Savings Time. Interestingly, at 11:59 the clock in the hospital room rolled to 1:00 am instead of 12:00 am. I noticed it and said something to my nurse, which was probably a good thing because it caused much more confusion throughout the night. So keep in mind as you read the next parts, this all happened within another hour not two hours.

At 1:15 am (according to the hospital clock), they had me start pushing. I was warned that this part could take a couple of hours and I was prepared for that to happen. After pushing twice, the doctor informed me that there was a head full of hair making an appearance. I pushed two more times and we had out little guy in this world with us at 1:43 am. The doctor was supposed to hold him up and tell us what the baby was but I looked down before she could hold him up and I knew that we had a boy. Sean was able to cut the cord and he was laying on me right away. It was very surreal and there were many tears in my eyes. (I did hold it together better than what I thought I would though. More on that later.)

After he was laying on me and they were starting to clean me up, she told me that the cord was actually wrapped around his neck. That was why she couldn’t hold him up right away and why I saw that it was a boy first. This was also about the time that they informed me that they needed to do repair work to me. At first they thought they could do it in the room but soon I was wheeled off into the OR. It was freezing cold in there and my arms were laying out to both sides. At some point I remember thinking, this must have been what it felt like for Jesus hanging on the cross like this with both arms out. Why that went through my head, I am not sure. Warm blankets were put on me which was awesome but I was still pretty shaky. All of the nurses were awesome though and kept checking to make sure I was ok. I was fine, I knew I was in good hands and that they were doing what was best for me.

While I was away, Sean was able to have some cool first moments with our son though. Since I needed extra attention, he got to feed him his first bottle. Not many fathers of breastfed babies have that opportunity and I am so glad that he had that chance. He had the chance to cuddle with him for a while before I came back in the room. I have no idea what time any of this happened.

Another side note story. While in the OR, since the time in the room was off upon his arrival, the computer system had not changed times yet. There was a 10 minute discussion, while I was laying on the table, about how in the world they were going to do all of my charting. I just looked at my nurse and laughed. I couldn’t help it because having a mom as a nurse and her using the same system, I knew that it was going to make for a difficult night for them. Funny enough my nurse and I had a conversation earlier in the night about how difficult it was going to be do write it all down if I had the baby around 2 am. Well, even him coming early, caused problems.

I almost got sick coming back from the OR but I finally was able to get some water and Lemon water ice down before they moved me to our room. I think that it was about 5:15am when I felt better and we were able to call my parents to tell them that he was here. My mom had to go to work so I knew that they would be up.

While they took us to the room, they took our little guy to the nursery to do his bath and we told them to keep him in there for a little while so we could get some sleep considering it was now 6am. It was about 8am when we woke up and I was starving. Oddly enough, breakfast was delivered soon after without me having to order due to the phone system being down.

The rest of day consisted of a visit from Uncle Daniel, watching Purdue lose in the Big Ten Championship, and lots of rest and bounding as a family of 3.

Without further ado, we introduce…..

Guyon Francis
March 13th, 1:43am
7 pounds 10.5 ounces
20 inches long

In total I was in labor 6.5 hours and only pushed for about 30 minutes. I don’t think i can complain too much about that part of delivery. Some of the other parts I could have done with out but it happens and everyone is healthy.

I knew before we even got pregnant that I wanted to do the nursery in a nautical theme. I didn’t really care if it was a girl or a boy because I could always add splashes of pink if it is a girl. You have already seen a couple of posts about the inspiration board I made for the room. This gave me a good starting point with a few changes and progress was made. I’ve also talked about the quilt that I made for the room.

The one project I haven’t really talked about was the curtains. I decided that I wanted to make the curtains for the room, that way I got exactly what I wanted. I got extra luck and a blizzard came and my mom and I were trapped in our house. She was soooooo much help, I am not sure what I would have done without her help on this one. They turned out really nice and of course I forgot to take pictures of us making them.(Probably due to the number of times I walked from one room to another between sewing and ironing.)

So what did the room turn out looking like? Without further adieu …….

Only thing left is the rocking chair. The rocking chair will make its journey out east once Baby Caff decides to arrive. My mom and dad will be bringing it. It is an antique from my mom’s side of the family and we are looking forward to having it in the nursery when they get here!